Democracy Versus Stakeholderism
Joe Everyman, Mr. Corporate, and Ms. Lawfirm walk into a voting precinct. Each gets a ballot, each marks his/her choices, and each puts the marked ballot into the voting box.
Joe Everyman, believing in the principle of one-man, one-vote, leaves.
But Mr. Corporate and Ms. Lawfirm each walk outside, put a sock puppet onto each of their hands, re-enter the precinct and use ventriloquist voices to demand additional ballots, one for each puppet.
The precinct workers say, “you can’t vote a second and third time!”
But Mr. Corporate and Ms. Lawfirm answer on behalf of their respective sock puppets: “I am not voting again, I am merely accompanying a pair of stakeholders who now want to cast their own votes.”
Huh? You would be quite correct if you were to say “This is not democracy!”
But you would be quite wrong if you were to think that this kind of thing does not happen.
In fact it happens quite often.
It goes by then name “multi-stakeholder” or simply “stakeholders”. These are systems in which some people get to use sock-puppets to multiply their votes and influence.